The First Post -Brexit Novel: Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Exit West’

Mohsin Hamid seems to know what we’ll be talking out before we do. Whether it’s the nuclear testing in Pakistan (Moth Smoke) or the uneasy stand-off between America and the Muslim world after 9/11 (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) or the unleashing of domestic forces in the wake of India’s new economy (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia) Hamid has scooped the news that stays news in literary form.

In doing this, Hamid has refashioned the post once filled by Graham Greene and revealed it’s possible to write moral thrillers for our contemporary age without falling prey to the exoticism that dogs Greene’s work or the empire-strikes-back simplicities of writers who resisted the British writer’s notion of dominion and culture.

‘Exit West’, Hamid’s new novel, will be published on March 7, 2017 and like all of his books it’s a love story. Read more